Egypt’s government-owned telecom has announced that citizens can expect 5G this year.
Telecom Egypt has begun testing 5G services in five locations across the country, aiming for a full rollout later in 2024.
The company says the tests will span three months, followed by a nationwide rollout.
CEO Mohamed Nasr expects the financial impact to be evident by the end of 2024. Already the telecom saw a 48% net profit in 2023, and more subscribers means even better margins, especially with the $150 million hole in its pockets.

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Google pulled many crypto exchanges, including Binance and Kraken, from its Play Store in India in what is the latest blow to the world’s second-largest internet market’s already dwindling web3 dream.
The ban comes two weeks after these global crypto exchanges were flagged for operating illegally in the South Asian market.
Financial Intelligence Unit, an Indian government agency that scrutinizes financial transactions, late last month issued show cause notices to nine crypto firms and alleged that they weren’t compliant with India’s anti-money laundering rules.
FIU had asked India’s IT Ministry to block websites of all the nine services in India.

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Nigeria’s apex bank has appointed new board members for the three commercial banks whose boards it dissolved.
The Central Bank of Nigeria dissolved the board of directors of Union, Keystone and Polaris banks citing regulatory non-compliance and corporate governance failure.
The dissolution and replacement of board members comes weeks after Jim Obazee’s investigation into the Central Bank under former Governor Godwin Emefiele’s alleged questionable bank acquisitions. Obazee’s report claims Emefiele used proxies to purchase these banks without evidence of payment.
Yetunde Oni takes over the helm of affairs at Union Bank alongside Mannir Ubani Ringim, the bank’s new executive director. Hassan Imam will head KeystoneBank as CEO.

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Amazon is laying off hundreds of employees across Prime Video and the recently acquired Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM) Studios, because it wants to focus on creating high-impact content.
Twitch, Amazon’s live-streaming site, is also preparing to cut off 35% of its staff after several top executives left the company in the final months of 2023.
Amazon isn’t alone: Beyond Amazon, the broader streaming landscape is grappling with economic headwinds, prompting layoffs at industry giants like Disney and Warner Bros.

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Global investment bank Citigroup has announced that it will cut 10% of its workforce, about 20,000 jobs, by 2026.
The chief financial officer Mark Mason, the layoffs are part of the company’s reorganisation and bid to boost its bank results.
The company has had four rough quarters culminating in Q4 2023 when it recorded $1.8 billion in losses, the biggest losses recorded since 2009 when it recorded $8.9 billion in losses in its fourth quarter.
The bank has sold some of its operations outside the US including its China consumer unit, its Vietnam business unit, and several other businesses across South East Asia.

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South Africa is seeing another multinational exit with network operator Lyca Mobile’s shutdown.
Last week, the mobile virtual network operator (MVNO) stated that it’s cutting ties in SA. Users had until January 9, 2024, to hop onto another network or face the risk of losing their phone number and access to text, call and data services.
Lyca’s announcement is related but the company’s long-time partner Cell-C is facing significant financial challenges.
Cell-C, however, has lost 9 million customers between 2021 and 2013, and has a R10.7 billion debt.

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Elon Musk’s Space X is redefining global mobile communication dynamics.
The satellite company has launched six Starlink satellites with direct-to-cell capability to eliminate mobile dead zones.
This means mobile phones can connect directly to the satellite, skipping the need for traditional cell towers. This makes it possible for mobile connectivity to work in remote areas and other places where traditional networks reach poorly or not at all.
Musk also clarified that Starlink’s satellite service is not positioned to compete with traditional terrestrial mobile networks, as the satellites only support 7 MB per satellite beam.
Starlink says the satellites will offer basic texting this year and will expand to voice, data, and Internet of Things by 2025.

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Mark Zuckerberg has been selling the shares every trading day since November 1, 2023, till the end of 2023.
The average earnings from each day amounted to $10.4 million, with the largest transaction occurring on December 28, 2023, at $17.1 million.
Meta shares, which grew by 193%, outperformed those of every other major tech giant except Nvidia Corp. last year and is now near its September 2021 record high.
Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff also cashed out over $475 million in the second half of 2023. Despite the sale, Zuckerberg still owns a sizable 13% of Meta which is worth about $125 billion

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Multichoice-owned SuperSports channel will not show this year’s edition of the Africa Cup of Nations after it lost its broadcasting rights to a Togo-based platform, New World TV.
The Confederation of African Football president Patrice Motsepe described it as a mega deal that no other broadcaster could match.
New World TV secured the exclusive rights to cover both AFCON 2023 in Ivory Coast and 2025 in Morocco.

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The ChatGPT parent company and its investor Microsoft faced a fresh lawsuit when two authors sued the company for allegedly using their books to train the AI service.
Nicholas Basbanes and Nicholas Gage claim that OpenAI infringed on copyrighted works to build an empire that’s now worth millions of dollars.
The authors want the courts to stop OpenAI from using their works without authorisation, and about $2.5 million in damages.
The lawsuit, which is over 150 pages long in total, accuses OpenAI of “copying and using millions of The Times’s copyrighted.

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